The Municipal Services Committee met 03/24/2025. One of the items they took up was the request from the Trout Museum of Art to take two on-street parking stalls on College Avenue and turn them into a loading zone.
The request received pushback from two nearby business owners who objected to the loss of on-street parking. The item ended up being held for two weeks to provide time to look into the matter more fully and investigate whether or not it would be feasible for the Trout to use the Lawrence parking lot on the south side of the building as a loading zone.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The Lawrence University/Trout Museum of Art building is scheduled to be completed in August of this year. It will house not only the Trout Museum of Art but also 46 market rate apartments. The Trout Museum wanted a loading zone installed on College Avenue in front of their building near the corning of Drew Street. This would provide a place for bus groups touring the museum to unload safely and also serve as a place for delivery drivers such as for Door Dash and Amazon to park while they drop deliveries off to the building’s residential occupants.
Two business owners attended the meeting and voiced opposition to the plan. Sara Rabideau, the owner of Casting On, the knitting store next to the Trout, told the committee that they had already lost four parking spaces during the construction process which had negatively impacted her business. She did not want to lose these two parking spots as well.
She said that she conducted a survey last week and received 65 responses. 15% said they would not stop if there was not parking in front of the store. 42% would only park depending on the weather. 43% were fine parking a couple blocks away. She also said 6 people specifically had written to her and said they had mobility issues but did not qualify for handicapped spaces and they would not be able to shop at her store if there was not parking outside.
She wondered if the Trout could use the alley to the south as a loading zone and noted that it would only take 5 minutes to unload a bus of museum attendees.
Ben Mullen the owner of Dr. Jekyll’s, on the other side of College Avenue from the Trout Museum, said the loss of parking did not impact him personally but he was worried about the precedent it would set. He noted there were a lot of lot of other downtown residential buildings with more to come in the future and he did not think it was fair to take away parking because of that.
Beth Schueffner, the Gallery Coordinator for the Trout, said that they would primarily be using the loading zone as a place to allow groups of seniors (many with wheelchairs) who are visiting the museum to safely load and unload from buses. She understood not wanting to lose parking, but said that the museum itself did not have ample parking and the safety of visitors was important too.
City Traffic Engineer Eric Lom told the committee that city policy said that no more than 10% of the parking stalls on any particular block were to be designated as loading, valet, or purchased parking. This request was in line with that policy. He also noted that there were 46 residential units in the building who would be ordering things like Door Dash and receiving Amazon packages. Those delivery drivers would need a place to park and if there was not a loading zone it was likely they would park in the bike lane or partially block traffic.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) could see both sides of the issue. She felt that going forward it was important that as more downtown developments came to College Avenue that the city did a better job of requiring the developers to work solutions for these types of needs into their plans rather than taking parking spots from College Avenue.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) asked about the possibility of using the alley to the south of the building as a loading zone. Engineer Lom responded that although there were some parking stalls there, the portion that was the public right-of-way was only 16 feet wide. If it was used as a loading zone, it would completely block the public area.
Alderperson Meltzer noted that Lawrence University who was one of the owners of the building had a big parking lot back there for Coleman Hall, and it seemed like that would be a reasonable place to have buses load and unload.
Alderperson Meltzer ended up making a motion to hold the item until the 04/07/2025 meeting so that this option could be investigated further and some discussion take place about it. This motion was approved unanimously by the Municipal Services Committee.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1290315&GUID=8D99AB54-3090-47E9-A8AA-C150BC7F0A34
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